Labour shouldn't become distracted by those more interested in protest than power
Labour's shift towards a party focused on winning power rather than protest was necessary. It is telling that it is now closer to government than at any point since 2010.
If you were unaware of the goings-on of British politics of recent years and I told you two pieces of statistical information relating to opinion polls, I wonder how you might react. The first piece of information is that, ten years ago this week, Labour led in the opinion polls. The second is that, ten years later, they are ahead in the opinion polls. You would probably think Labour, not the Tories, had been the government for the past decade and more. And you would presumably also believe that Labour, not the Tories, were much better at winning and remaining in power than their rival opponents.
Putting aside these occurrences which did not come to light, the truth is, of course, the opposite: the Tories, in government since 2010, have ruled Britain for 32 of the past 50 years (49 of the past 75). They are the natural party of government; for Labour, so accustomed to defeat are they that merely talking from the opposition benches instead of governing has seemingly become interminable.
But in the 5,000-and-more days since Labour last governed the country, the prospect of government has never looked more probable. Equally, scarcely have the Tories looked so vulnerable, so weak, so morally unfit for office. It is this point — why we are where we are in British politics regarding the two main parties — to which I will turn my attention, despite this being considerably well-documented.
It is common knowledge that the Tories have completely blown the mandate they were given in 2019 through which they could have unleashed true genuine change, especially with regard to the levelling up programme, which I discussed here last week.
The list of failures over 14 years is endless but especially over the past few years: taxpayers’ money wasted on dodgy personal protective equipment (PPE), the Owen Paterson scandal, Partygate, Boris Johnson’s drawn-out yet dramatic downfall, the short-lived Truss disaster. Or the endless conflict between Left and Right in the party. The manifold inner groupings and divisions between the free-marketeers, the liberal conservatives, the One-Nationers, the Brexit patriots, the social conservatives, the Red Wallers, the Blue Wallers. The list is endless; and so are the quarrels between them.
So whilst Labour’s comprehensive lead in the opinion polls today has been significantly aided by the scale of the government’s incompetence over the past few years, this is not to argue that Labour has remained the same or has not changed its image. Indeed, it has made one significant change which has made the party attractive (or, at least compared with the previous leadership, tolerable for some to look at and possibly consider supporting).
Some years ago, by which I mean the years of the Corbyn leadership, scarcely did Labour look as serious about governing the country as it presently does. It was, to employ a phrase used by some allies of Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, more focused on protest than power. Some people — a minority, it should be said — liked this Labour Party; the majority did not, and the worst general election defeat since the 1930s was proof of that.
They didn’t like it, because of the financial profligacy attached; because of the anti-Western foreign policy; because of the weak support of the Union; because of the rife anti-Semitism; and because of the general consensus that that man — Mr Corbyn — couldn’t be Prime Minister. His beliefs were his beliefs; they were just not shared by the majority of voters whose political positioning rests in the middle, of course, commonly deemed the centre ground. Labour abdicated the centre ground between 2015 and 2019 under the Corbyn leadership, and voters duly sent the party packing to find someone else; someone much more credible. It became the party of protest, not the party of power.
Fast forward to 2024 and this disaster from years ago is now unthought of. Labour had (and has) as much right to be the party of power as the Tories; but electing a man whose beliefs find more acquiescence on marches and protests than in the average living rooms of millions of voters was hardly going to end well. And it didn’t.
Four years on from the conclusion of the Corbyn leadership, those for whom the Corbyn project was a utopian-style socialism are unsurprisingly unhappy with Starmer’s Labour leadership. They say he is uninspiring, boring, unambitious, dull, grey — any pessimistic adjective, you name it, it’ll be there somewhere. But after the once-hopeful premise of Boris Johnson which ended in flames, the chaos of Liz Truss, and now Rishi Sunak attempting anything to find a winning Tory formula as election day looms, what we don’t need is someone who is bumbling and incompetent, especially on the economy — the primary political issue of our time, not least as Britain seeks to recover from the pandemic and needs a rapid recovery of growth and wealth.
After the last election, the electorate needed to see something considerably better than what they were offered. They needed to see a changed, reformed Labour — one serious not about marching and shouting with placards but one vastly more focused on the chance to win elections and change the lives of people for the better. Four years on, with one of this week’s polls putting the party 26 points ahead of the Tories, that internal change has resulted in positive feelings externally with the electorate.
As they have done in the past few years, some on the far-Left will bemoan Labour’s present state. They will lament the party talking about bold NHS reform, as Wes Streeting rightly did this week; or about being proud to be British; or about pledging to increase defence spending; or about expressing the importance of fiscal competence regarding manifesto pledges; or about supporting business and enterprise to boost prosperity.
But while they bemoan its current state, never forget the catastrophe of the last election. And if Labour wins this year, remember how much it has changed (along with the Tories but for the worse). And don’t forget that one crucial transformation has contributed to making that all possible: Labour is now no longer a party of protest but a party of power.